Slashdot Mirror
RTS "World in Conflict" From a Design Perspective
Game Designer Manveer Heir has another installment of his "Design Lesson 101" series where he takes a look at a game from a designer's standpoint and attempts to learn something in the process. In this installment he takes a look at the RTS, World in Conflict that has an interesting twist on resource management. "World in Conflict has a simple resource management system. The player is given a fixed amount of resources to obtain units with. Shortly after you requisition units, they are air-dropped into the game, eliminating the need for building bases. Immediately, this leads to a unit-centric, tactical feel to the entire game. [...] When a unit dies, however, the resources that were allocated to obtain the unit are not lost forever. Instead, what World in Conflict does is return the resources to the player. Not immediately, however. Instead, the resources trickle back in over time. Your resources aren't constrained by how well or poor you are doing in the game (at least not constrained for very long). By doing this, World in Conflict avoids the snowball effect that exists in many real-time strategy games."
That seems like it would lead to long-drawn out games where one side, and then the other, manage to grab temporary advantage, only to be pushed back to a state of near-equilibrium. Even good tactical thinking isn't really rewarded, as a stunning tactical victory can't be leveraged into anything other than a fleeting advantage.
I haven't played the game, FWIW, but that's what I imagine a game with those constraints would be like.
The single player campaign is fun and really keeps you going through the game till the end. The multiplayer mode on the other hand isn't as much fun, maybe i'm not very good at this game, but it felt like i was constantly losing my units because the opponent had the right type of unit (helicopters) to destroy my tanks for example. A good team would have players helping each other but that rarely is the case, a game shouldnt relay too much on the teamwork aspect even though that is what most online games seem to do these days. A good example on how to do this right is quake wars, where team work is key to victory but all the units are strong enough to fight and don't instantly die because they face the wrong type of opponent as with WOC.
I disagree. In other games, you have a small army of resource-gathering minions building a fairly constant resouce pool. In this game, the units and trickle-back replace these minions. Like other games, if you run out of resources, you have to wait until they are built up again before buyin more units. If the time for the unit resources to 'trickle back' is reasonably long, then the player would have to resort to replacing units a handful at a time. Since the player who is sustaining losses is denied resources while they are trickling back, they remain disadvantaged. As anyone who has played a RTS knows, throwing handfuls of units at a horde of invaders usually results in favor of the invaders.
I haven't played this game either.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Because, I don't know, Red Alert 2 didn't have squads entering buildings 6 years before CoH did.
Personally I think Warcraft 3 is still the most enjoyable RTS for me, mostly becasue of custom maps though.
concering the post to which I originally replied:
World in conflict is just way too simple an RTS. It's a game for graphics whores, great graphics, decent attempt at a story, boring gameplay. (emphasis mine)
I wish we could take the graphcis (sic) of World in conflict and combine it with RTS gameplay knowhow of Starcraft or supreme commander uhh...
I want to reply to a number of posts but when I hit "reply" it just sits there, broken, so I'll try to sum up my thoughts here instead...
Having played everything from the original Command and Conquer all the way up to and including World In Conflict I can say that WIC is actually a refreshing break from the usual - spend 90% of the mission grinding out a base and building up a huge army and then just rush and clobber your enemy - style RTS.
The resources you have for building units are just half of the game. There are, in fact, tactical aid points which are awarded to you for accomplishing various objectives. Using these points wisely is almost always a deciding factor in multiplayer games. Players can also switch between different roles - support, infantry, armor, and air. Your team's balance and how you respond to the opposing team's mix definitely requires some good tactics.
Finally, I think that the ground control style game play is more realistic. Let's be honest, very few real battles are a "Rush the enemy and kill / destroy everything - causalities be damned". Kamikaze missions in WIC don't work. Neither do lone rangers. I think there's more strategy in WIC than in most of the "build crap like crazy and then rush" RTS games. I'm not saying I haven't spent hours enjoying those games - just that this is a new, more realistic, type.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
My point was the game sold on the graphics alone, do you want a modern game to have crappy graphics? I doubt you do either. My point is the gameplay is stale and the people who bought and liked World in conflict will give the message to massive that simple dumbed down gameplay is great, when it isn't.
By doing this, World in Conflict avoids the snowball effect that exists in many real-time^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H real-world strategy games.
Not to slag Company of Heroes, but I played it for many hours, and it has absolutely nothing on World in Conflict. WiC multiplayer games are smooth and enjoyable, fast paced and full of tactical and strategic aspects. Combat starts almost immediately, and there is absolutely zero base building. As a veteran of many, many RTS games over 15+ years, WiC is a breath of fresh air.
And before that Herzog Zwei and before that Dune2.
The biggest differences in RTS games are how many "Factories" are optimal, dictating the "type" of strategies that work. Always incorporating economics and the concept of "counters" and tiers.
In order of popularity:
In Starcraft/WC3 single gate, single rax, single hatchery, versus double or triple allows for a large depth of strategy (within limits of the scale).
In Red Alert and DoW and CoH it's always 1 of each building type. The battles are expected to be more about micromanagement since the maps are smaller and resources more scarce and the counters "Softer" until higher tiers. Some people love it (see Company of Heroes).
In Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander/Conquest:Frontier Wars it's hyper macro with an assumption of continual creation/death of units and often incorporate a "supply line" concept. Some people love it (there aren't many).
Beyond this we have a different kind of game that rears its head from time to time which just decides to BREAK OUT of the mold.
Myth was original-ish with no resource management, just pure RTS with mixed soft and hard counters (later seen in Defcon and other failures...if people liked these types of games, the very best would have decent sales) and now the natural evolution of that into WIC to try to bring it back toward the archetypical RTS-land without stepping foot on it by introducing resources without an economic strategy (run away?). I smell poor play and poor sales. This is just my decades of RTS gaming experience talking, YMMV
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
In Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander/Conquest:Frontier Wars it's hyper macro with an assumption of continual creation/death of units and often incorporate a "supply line" concept. Some people love it (there aren't many).
Most TA (or at least TA-dericative, Balanced Annihilation/Complete Annihilation) games I see are driven by small raid groups avoiding enemy fortifications and destroying his economy... Really not that much macro there.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I played it with all graphics options set to low, it looked pretty mediocre that way but still was fun to play (well, until the frustration over the lacking teamplay set in).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Are you kidding me on the resource hog part? My top of the line (2.5 years ago) could run that game at low resolutions at medium quality. And this is an RTS-game that looks like a FPS game one or two generations old.
Is there a single RTS-game out the that isn't a clickfest? At least in WiC you only need to control 3-10 units at the most.